New Brainzooming Articles at Brainzooming.com

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Product innovation is rampant. Great for providing choices! Crappy for having to choose from among them.

So it's smart product strategy for brands to remove uncertainty and apprehension by making decisions simpler for consumers. Interestingly, today's examples of doing this well both come from Sam's Club - home of having to buy more than you'll ever need to get a good deal (especially for a two-person household).

Shopping for cheaper deodorant, the main brand switching factor was getting a product smelling close to my current choice (or at least not smelling weird).

This sealed four-pack of Degree deodorant had a great per unit price. But who likes a great deal on 4 deodorants only to find out after buying it that it smells like perfume?

How to avoid this deal breaker? Ingenious marketing to the rescue!

This multi-pack included a scratch-and-sniff label on the left of the package allowing me to smell the deodorant before buying. It was close enough, and I switched brands.

Cyndi was getting an early jump on shopping for Christmas baking as she's planning to make hundreds of chocolate chip cookies (among other things). A pallet in the middle of one aisle featured a great buy on 72 ounce bags of Nestle Semi-Sweet "Morsels," the chocolate chips of Nestlé® TOLL HOUSE® cookie recipe fame.

She asked how many bags she'd need since the recipe called for 12 ounces of chocolate chips. Doing the math in my head, I looked over to the stack of chocolate chips to see the math clearly displayed on the packaging: these big bags are good for 6 batches of cookies each. Since math skills are probably declining at the same rate product proliferation is increasing, how innovative to simplify the math and create happier cookie makers.

And by the way Nestlé®, maybe you should up the recipe to 18 ounces of chocolate chips? That's 50% more in sales for you and even happier cookie eaters! - Mike Brown

Suggesting an amount of something to use has always been an intriguing marketing variable to me, i.e. do you really need to "lather, rinse, repeat" to get clean hair? Probably not, but if a shampoo maker can convince people they do, it leads to 2x in purchases. Powerful potential impact from 3 words.

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